What Is 'Real?'

[Nakosis]

Please observe the meaning of your post only using pure observation through external senses and scientifically calibrated instruments.

Yes, this activity can be observed and measured.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

No games to play in your quest to justify your agenda. Reality is not a game.

So you play another game. Your rule is, that your rules decide, what reality is, because you say so. Well, I can and have tested what you say about reality is and reality is not so. Because we can disagree reality is not what you claim. If everything in effect as you claim is objective, then it is not possible to disagree, because there is no disagreement in the objective reality since it is independent of the mental. But that is not so, because we are mentally and subjectively disagreeing and thus reality is not as you claim.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Yes, this activity can be observed and measured.

Then show it for the meaning of your statement.

 

[shunyadragon]

So you play another game. Your rule is, that your rules decide, what reality is, because you say so. Well, I can and have tested what you say about reality is and reality is not so. Because we can disagree reality is not what you claim. If everything in effect as you claim is objective, then it is not possible to disagree, because there is no disagreement in the objective reality since it is independent of the mental. But that is not so, because we are mentally and subjectively disagreeing and thus reality is not as you claim.

No games.

 

[shunyadragon]

Then show it for the meaning of your statement.

If you are hooked up to the machine they can measure it.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

No games.

So do "No games" in pure scientific notation including for the meaning of "No games". I want the meaning of the words in pure scientific notation. Or an another relevant example of the meaning of some words in pure scientific notation.

Then will I listen to you. Stop using ordinary language. Only use pure scientific notation.
Give me the scientific theory of what you are saying.
Just like the theory of gravity or what not.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

If you are hooked up to the machine they can measure it.

Show me a brain scan, where you on the brain scan as the brain scan can observe in the brain scan as such the meaning of this sentence.

 

[shunyadragon]

Show me a brain scan, where you on the brain scan as the brain scan can observe in the brain scan as such the meaning of this sentence.

There man many research article son the subject. I do not spoon fed do your own homework.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

There man many research article son the subject. I do not spoon fed do your own homework.

Remember what I asked of you. Deliver. No just how a brain scan work. I want the result of what I asked about and you do it, because you say it is possible.

 

[shunyadragon]

Remember what I asked of you. Deliver. No just how a brain scan work. I want the result of what I asked about and you do it, because you say it is possible.

Self service only no spoon feeding. Do your own homework.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

Yes, this activity can be observed and measured.

What we observe is neural correlates, and it is a necessary (but not sufficient) condition for correlating neural activity with anything having semantic or conceptual content (i.e. "meaning") that we are told or otherwise informed by the participant. In other words, in order to associate some neural activity (as measured by neuroimaging) with "meaning" we can't just look at the data or images from an fMRI scan or whatever. We have to first establish that the subject/participant is performing the task and understands in order to correlate their understanding with the data

 

[Nakosis]

What we observe is neural correlates, and it is a necessary (but not sufficient) condition for correlating neural activity with anything having semantic or conceptual content (i.e. "meaning") that we are told or otherwise informed by the participant. In other words, in order to associate some neural activity (as measured by neuroimaging) with "meaning" we can't just look at the data or images from an fMRI scan or whatever. We have to first establish that the subject/participant is performing the task and understands in order to correlate their understanding with the data

Ok, but the point is whether one need assume that thinking/thought is a non-physical process.

 

[Spirit of Light]

In another (non-debate) thread, it was asked what 'real' is. A response to that question was the Google dictionary definition, "actually existing as a thing or occurring in fact; not imagined or supposed."

How can one be certain something is real given that definition? I'm fairly certain nearly everyone has had dreams that, while dreaming, they thought were real until they awoke.

What one perceives is merely a model resulting from sense organs that create electrical signals as interpreted by the brain. How can one trust that these are, indeed, real? How do you know you won't wake up from this reality into a 'real' one?

I have to say i agree a lot with what you say in this OP

 

[shunyadragon]

The ultimate reality that know through senses may be totally illusion or real as the rock offGibraltar, but it is a very lovely, painful, tragic, fantastic, and interesting reality we experience. It could either, and there could be an assortment of other worlds in other dimensions, in reality the bottom line is that it would not make any difference to the reality we experience objectively. Except may mythology, science fiction, and of course, religious beliefs of worlds outside our own, I am okay with this, and believe in God, but it is not the objective reality we have to deal with every day.

 

[PearlSeeker]

In another (non-debate) thread, it was asked what 'real' is. A response to that question was the Google dictionary definition, "actually existing as a thing or occurring in fact; not imagined or supposed."

How can one be certain something is real given that definition? I'm fairly certain nearly everyone has had dreams that, while dreaming, they thought were real until they awoke.

What one perceives is merely a model resulting from sense organs that create electrical signals as interpreted by the brain. How can one trust that these are, indeed, real? How do you know you won't wake up from this reality into a 'real' one?

This is the old dream argument:

Dream argument - Wikipedia

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/dreams-dreaming/#DreaEpis

I was attracted to this thread because recently I have (again) watched Inception. It reminded me how interesting topic is dreaming.

There is also lucid dreaming. To be able to know that you are dreaming you have to perform some kind of reality check. In the movie characters learned to ask themselves how they came to be in a certain situation, then realizing that they can’t remember because the dream just dropped them there. This works most of the time (it's known as the coherence solution) but sometimes a dream can be very similar to just a day in our life. The main character also uses a spinning top to check if he's in a dream. Should he spin the top and it topples over, he is awake.

Spoiler: End scene

In the end scene he doesn't wait to see if the top will topple over or not. He doesn't care any more.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

What we observe is neural correlates, and it is a necessary (but not sufficient) condition for correlating neural activity with anything having semantic or conceptual content (i.e. "meaning") that we are told or otherwise informed by the participant. In other words, in order to associate some neural activity (as measured by neuroimaging) with "meaning" we can't just look at the data or images from an fMRI scan or whatever. We have to first establish that the subject/participant is performing the task and understands in order to correlate their understanding with the data

Yeah, that is about it.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Ok, but the point is whether one need assume that thinking/thought is a non-physical process.

Please with observation and/or instruments answer, if "one need assume"? You can't. You demand a standard of understanding reality, you can't live up to yourself. You are doing a mental process to answer if the world is physical.
Science is in part to accept the answer you get. If the answer is that there things which can't be answered with science then that is the answer.

Here is what I have learn.
The claim that the world is from God is without evidence and so on.
The clam that the world is physical is without evidence and so on.

Now some people still feel that they have to defend one of them. I don't care if it is the one or the other being defended. Both are without evidence and so on.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

The ultimate reality that know through senses may be totally illusion or real as the rock offGibraltar, but it is a very lovely, painful, tragic, fantastic, and interesting reality we experience. It could either, and there could be an assortment of other worlds in other dimensions, in reality the bottom line is that it would not make any difference to the reality we experience objectively. Except may mythology, science fiction, and of course, religious beliefs of worlds outside our own, I am okay with this, and believe in God, but it is not the objective reality we have to deal with every day.

Okay, observe as observe a very lovely, painful, tragic, fantastic, and interesting reality. You are making an argument about a reality, where your argument is not part of the argument. "lovely, painful, tragic, fantastic, and interesting" are not parts of objective reality, because they don't have objective referents.
You are not the first one to do this. Press one of the "objectivitists" and they will end up using emotions. You did and now you are going to deny that it is relevant, because it is not useful for you to understand it differently. Useful has no objective referent.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Self service only no spoon feeding. Do your own homework.

I don't have to. I know the answer and LegionOnomaMoi gave it.

Your model is not able to explain in necessary AND sufficient terms reality.

 

[Ponder This]

Well, the things are defined as having reality independent of the mind. If you think that doesn't work, and therefore the things are not really defined, then tell me your definition.

Well, there's this other way of looking at things which says that nothing is imaginary, because how do you know it is imaginary? There's no test for it. If you think a thing in your mind, that doesn't mean that it doesn't exist somewhere "in reality".
So there's a logical conundrum here around the duality of real and imaginary. Perhaps the logic doesn't actually support epistemological solipsism. Because you can't just say the mind is real without being able to perceive that it is real.
Like when you go to sleep and you don't dream... so what happened? Did you cease to exist for a few hours? Is the self even a "real" thing? Why would people accept that dreams aren't real but then turn around and hypocritically affirm that the mind is real?
There's a problem when you say the things in dreams aren't real, because it means you were able to perceive that they weren't real. And that's not an observation you can make without knowing that things are real or imaginary through empirical observation. And that contradicts epistemological solipsism.
I suppose you could say that epistemological solipsism requires rational empiricism. And that's why the argument can't stop at solipsism; it has to go all the way to nihilism.